SIZING UP ARCHITECTURE: A Critic’s View

Mark Lamster
Architecture Critic | Dallas Morning News 
Assistant Professor and Dillon Center Fellow | School of Architecture University of Texas Arlington

DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 2014
TIME: 6:00 pm, preceded by a reception at 5:30
PLACE: Arkansas Arts Center lecture hall

Architecture critics are a rare breed in this part of the country. Mark Lamster, a recent arrival at the Dallas Morning News, offers a perspective on the built environment that enables others to see and talk about their surroundings in new and different ways. Lamster, who also teaches a graduate seminar on criticism and critical writing at the University, has, according to the newspaper’s editor, Bob Mong, a “range of interests that rivals those of any architecture critic in the country.” His background in art as well as architecture informs his writing. A contributing editor to Architectural Review and Design Observer, his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other national publications. Lamster is currently at work on a definitive new biography of the late architect Philip Johnson who, among his many accomplishments, established the architecture department at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The book is to be published by Little Brown.

For more than a decade, Lamster served as editor of the Princeton Architecture Press. He is the author of several books including Master of Shadows (2009) a political biography of the painter Peter Paul Rubens. Baseball fans may be familiar with his first book, Spalding’s World Tour, the story of a group of all-star baseball players who circled the globe in the 19th Century. That work was a New York Times Editor’s selection. Lamster, a native of New York City, has a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and an M.A. from Tufts.

Supporters of the Architecture and Design Network lecture series include the Arkansas Arts Center, the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture and the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture. All Network lectures are free and open to the public. For further information, contact ardenetwork@icloud.com.